


to break a curse

by owlsshadows



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Cheesy, Fluff, M/M, Suga works at a magic shop, Tanaka is cursed, Very Cheesy, extremely cheesy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 02:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20302126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlsshadows/pseuds/owlsshadows
Summary: He is not Kageyama Tobio with pinpoint precision and daring new spells or Hinata Shouyou who learned to fly without a broom thanks to sheer willpower. He is not Oikawa Tooru, whose overflowing magic makes everyone  drawn to him, nor Kita Shinsuke, who can see the root of all magic flowing around in thin air without the help of a magical glass.He is not the type to be the protagonist; not someone who will change the state of current magical practice and leave his footprint to the coming generations. He is just Sugawara Koushi, a mage nearing thirty who works at a small magic shop selling innocent potions and magical ointments, and who attempts to lift curses on his own once in a blue moon.In which Tanaka gets cursed, and he happens upon Sugawara's magic shop.





	to break a curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yikescaninot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikescaninot/gifts).

> written for Ash, love of my life, on the occasion that we have become the same age (for the next two weeks at least)
> 
> happy birthday!!!

“Excuse me, I think I’m cursed.”

Suga can’t help but sigh under the counter, sending one last, wistful glance at the cup ramen he wanted to make for himself before his latest customer entered the shop. Even if he was not hungry to the point he could eat an entire frog in one bite, there are some words he had grown a little wary of throughout the years. The last person who greeted him with ‘I’m cursed” was Oikawa Tooru, who finished his sentence with “with good looks” and a theatrical flick of his picture-perfect magical hair as an attempt to win Suga over. It has been like this ever since they were both students at the Sendai Regional Magic Academy, and even if Suga knew that most of Oikawa’s flirting fiascos were caused by either Hanamaki or Matsukawa testing their brand new love potions on him, his last attempt seemed genuine, making it all the worse.

The voice, however, albeit familiar, doesn’t belong to Oikawa, which makes Suga just a little hopeful that he has been visited by a decent, paying customer.

“What makes you think that you’re cursed?” he asks as he stands up, cracking his neck before he peeks out from under barely open eyelids.

The man standing in front him wears a grey t-shirt, tattered jeans and a pair of sneakers which had seen better days. He exudes a familiar warmth, the potential to wield magic bubbles around him in all those beautiful, iridescent reds and violets Suga had been so attracted to as a high schooler. His hair is a short, frizzy mess of dark ashen blond, his eyes a stormy grey. His slightly troubled expression transforms before Suga’s eyes: it stirs with confusion, melts with pleasant surprise and finally blooms into a brilliant smile.

“Suga-san!” he says excitedly. His skin cracks a thousand places, tiny mouths appearing in the cracks mimicking his smile, grinning at Suga thousandfold. “I didn’t know you worked here! I didn’t see you since… since when? Daichi’s wedding?”

“Tanaka,” Suga smiles back. He wonders, what would make the most natural response. Long time no see? Fancy meeting you? “What brings you here?” he asks finally, immediately regretting it. Why, really, would someone with creepy grins for skin turn up at a magic shop? “Apart from the obvious,” he adds to save face as much as possible.

“I was in town for business,” Tanaka replies his smile – and its slightly alarming number of replicas across his skin – never fading, “when these things suddenly appeared.”

Suga raises a brow and leans closer, squinting at one of the smaller fake-mouths on Tanaka’s neck. “Interesting.”

“They’re unsightly,” Tanaka says, covering his neck shyly, and as his smile disappears from his face to be replaced with a boyish blush, the mouths on his skin disappear too, leaving red blisters all over his arms and hands.

“Only when you smile?” Suga asks, quickly rounding the counter to reach for the arm of his former high school underclassman.

“Yeah,” Tanaka replies, breath hitching when Suga touches his skin.

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“Do you know what could be the cause?”

“Ugh… I think my sister cursed me,” Tanaka says bashfully. 

“Oh?”

“She messed up an incantation and grew bright pink cat ears, and I laughed when I saw her,” Tanaka continues. “She told me that I should stop with my grin. Next thing I know, I come to town for a meeting and my business partner faints when I greet them.”

“Ah,” Suga nods along. “Yeah, that could be your sister’s doing. She’s been doing a course on magical instruments if I remember correctly? Music and chants?”

“Yeah, she’s working on her doctorate now,” Tanaka says, puffing out his chest in pride. “She’s researching the impact of animal companions on the effectiveness of chants.”

“Animal companions,” Suga hums. “Hence the cat ears, huh?”

“Usually she works with crows, but Kenma has accompanied Hinata last time he visited, and he and my sister went crazy over the possibilities to expand the research.”

“I can imagine.” 

Suga finds it in himself to laugh, despite the envy overcoming him. It’s the same old tune taunting and haunting him, reminding him of how amazing the people surrounding him are whereas he is just Sugawara Koushi; a reliable mage but no genius. He is not Kageyama Tobio with pinpoint precision and daring new spells or Hinata Shouyou who learned to fly without a broom thanks to sheer willpower. He is not Oikawa Tooru, whose overflowing magic makes everyone drawn to him, nor Kita Shinsuke, who can see the root of all magic flowing around in thin air without the help of magical glass.

He is not the type to be the protagonist; not someone who will change the state of current magical practice and leave his footprint to the coming generations. He is just Sugawara Koushi, a mage nearing thirty who works at a small magic shop selling innocent potions and magical ointments, and who attempts to lift curses on his own once in a blue moon.

“So, um… do you think you could do something with this, Suga-san?”

“Maybe,“ Suga says, poking at a blister on Tanaka’s arm, “I can take a look, but wouldn’t it be easier to ask her to remove this?”

“My sister? I asked. She said she had no idea what this was and that I deserved to suffer a little,” Tanaka shrugs.

“Interesting!” Suga laughs. “Irresponsible, but certainly interesting.”

Suppressing his stomach’s growing demands to eat, he reaches for the pair of goggles pushed to the top of his head, drawing them down to his nose. Through the magic glass, he can see the soft pink net of the curse caging Tanaka. He sighs seeing the unfamiliar pattern. 

Verbal magic, such as spells, incantations, and most curses have never been Suga’s forte. He has always considered himself to be excellent with runes – as underappreciated as that skill has been – and an above-average potions master, but he simply lacked the physical power needed to uphold a spell.

He kind of wishes Tendou was working today. His red-haired co-worker has always had a knack to read the magic surrounding a person to the point he could guess their intentions from the way they twisted magic around them unconsciously. Suga has always felt safe with Tendou behind the counter, reassured that whatever problems their customers had, Tendou could address them easily, albeit in his signature, slightly creepy way.

But Suga is alone in the shop today, and he murmurs under his breath as he pulls Tanaka by the arm to stand under the magic chandelier. He adjusts his goggles, filtering Tanaka’s natural latent magic out. As his vision on the pink threads of the curse becomes clearer, he purses his lips. “Off with the T-shirt,” he says then.

“Um…” Tanaka starts, flustered. “Right here, Suga-san?”

“Why, did you grow shy since we’ve last met?” Suga smiles, stepping away and lifting his goggles. “It seems that the curse’s root is in the middle of your chest. I would like to take a closer look.”

Tanaka looks around the shop, glancing from the glass forefront to the tall bookshelves, to the table by the counter with all kinds of potions, before his eyes settle on the door leading to the back of the shop.

“Can we go inside?” he asks.

Suga blinks in surprise, but nods immediately, walking behind the counter to get the keys to the back. The room is tiny and badly lit – that’s where they keep their ingredients for potions, most of which would go bad in a bright room, after all. They have wooden crates against one wall, up til the ceiling, a kitchen corner with a small stove to brew potions and a kettle for tea – and lately, in Suga’s case, instant ramen – a table with a sofa by the small window. There’s a pack of tarot cards on the table, laid out in a giant mess – Tendou likes to use them in his tricks, attributing all the information he reads out of people to the cards, and while he hadn’t used them in a while to encourage people in a roundabout way and call it magic, he played with them just the other day, building a house of cards out of it.

_ “You’re lonely,” Tendou told him, blood-red eyes watching him calmly. _

_ “How come?” Suga smiled in reply, placing his cup ramen on the table. “I’m fine.” _

_ “You see,” Tendou continued, “lies like this don’t do any good.” _

_ “I’m not lying.” _

_ “To me, probably not,” Tendou looked up, placing a card on top of his structure without even looking at it, “but to yourself?” _

_ “Are you worried or what?” Suga asked, slurping up his ramen. _

_ “You seem to be down lately. Did you meet someone? Saw something you didn’t want?” Tendou asked. His hands were no longer on the cards, yet the cards continued to build the house on their own. His hands were in his lap, holding a rune Suga had scribbled that morning. “Seeking to relive the past is not something happy people do.” _

_ “I’m not… unhappy,” Suga replied, voice uncertain. He didn’t even know what had come over him; he blamed the weather, hot and thick with humidity, reminding him of the summer of his last year in high school. “I just… don’t want to forget.” _

_ “There’s a difference between regret and nostalgia,” Tendou said then, standing up. He smoothed his pants down and reached for his empty coffee mug with an eerie smile on his face. His hands cupped the mug, long, spidery fingers white against the dark purple lacquer on the ceramics. “You can’t change the past.” _

_ He left his cup on the edge of the kitchen sink, walking out to the shop front. The carefully built house of cards crumbled as soon as the door closed behind him. _

_ Suga found himself alone with a question in his head that he had always had the answer for, yet he kept catching himself reconsidering. His instant soup went slowly cold in his hands as he stared off to the table, where the Fool laughed back at him. _

Suga passes the table as he walks up to the window, pulling the curtains open to let some natural light in. He would have liked it more to take a look at Tanaka’s chest under the magic chandelier, whose light can pinpoint the roots of magic, but he also didn’t want to make Tanaka uncomfortable.

Tanaka follows him meekly, fidgeting with the neckline of his T-shirt before he grabs it and pulls it over his head. Suga supposes it’s unprofessional to stare, yet he can’t help his eyes roaming across the freshly exposed skin, lingering around Tanaka’s back where taut muscles stretch under tan skin and finally settling on a familiar birthmark on Tanaka’s shoulder.

Strange, how things get engraved into one’s memory – how he can still call upon that summer crystal clear without the help of any rune, how he can see Tanaka’s unsuspecting smile, how he can hear his loud, obnoxious laugh that had always echoed in his chest in the form of short, nervous flutters of his ever-conscious heart. He remembers Tanaka’s soft, short sigh. He remembers watching his lips, long enough that Tanaka noticed.

He recalls blurting out the first thing he noticed, afraid that his feelings would be revealed.

“Turn around, Tanaka, or do you want me to see through your back to check your chest?” he grumbles now, and Tanaka complies with a quick, jerky move.

“I’m sorry, Suga-san, I got distracted.”

“What caught your eye?” Suga sends him a smile, placing his goggles back on.

“The Fool,” Tanaka replies.

Suga raises a brow, and he tips his head to the side to see the table behind Tanaka. With his goggles on, he gasps when he sees the scattered deck of cards Tendou left behind. Each tarot faces down, apart from the one card that had drawn his attention the other day. Thick, dark red magic bleeds at its sides, vaporizing into nothing.

“Tendou’s magic,” Suga says, turning back to Tanaka. “I think it’s saturated with truth serum. He offers tarot readings once a week, it’s largely popular in the neighborhood. Especially with high school girls,” he adds, laughing. 

“Is that legit magic?” Tanaka asks. “I thought reading tarot was contested…”

“It’s not the cards he reads,” Suga says with a soft smile, eliciting a terrified little noise from Tanaka. “And he gives surprisingly good advice, so what’s the harm in it? I’m surprised that you noticed, though. Have you always been this sensitive to magic?”

There’s a glint to Tanaka’s eyes now as he keeps eye contact, and when he smiles, a thousand grins bloom across his skin like a bunch of venus flytraps, red and open, ready to devour their prey. “I picked up a thing or two,” he says.

Suga clears his throat and adjusts his goggles to collect himself, focusing his attention to Tanaka’s chest. The fact that it’s covered in imitation mouths helps a lot, for his brain not to make any further, unnecessary connections to high school memories. Taking a deep breath just in case to strengthen his resolve, he leans close, pinching one of the mouths close with two fingers. Tanaka gasps in return.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” Tanaka shakes his head. “But it definitely feels… weird.”

“Hm,” Suga purses his lips. “Still, I doubt ointments would have any effect.”

With his goggles on, he can see the lines of the curse  clearly , running across Tanaka’s body as soft pink veins of malice, centering just below his sternum; he can even make out the pulsating nature in which magic flows in and out of the center. Suga runs a hand over it, finding that the magic has no reaction to touch. He lets out a sigh, reaching for his pocket. He might not be the most talented, most unique magic-user in the universe, but he is a decent, reliable mage. He might be a little weak with incantations, but he had worked as a mage for years and he had seen plenty of curses. It may be usually Tendou’s job to analyze the curse, but it’s Suga who makes the potion that lifts it. It’s his runes that break through layers and layers of carefully composed, malicious curses.

Once he even saved the life of the vice principal of his old school – who was cursed with continuous headaches by his bad toupee – and Tendou kept joking that he should’ve sold some ointment for hair growth to the man once they lifted the curse.

He is not by any means a lost cause. But he had never had to identify a new curse from scratch.

“I will have to try out a few methods to see what was the exact cause of the curse,” he announces, lifting his chin to see Tanaka eye-to-eye. “I would like to start by seeing what happened exactly when your sister cursed you. Do you allow me to look into your memories?”

“To look into my memories?”

“Like, a glimpse of your past,” Suga explains, pulling his goggles up to his head. “I use a rune, and it takes us back to the moment she cursed you. I want to know exactly what words she used, what movements she did, whether she had any magical items on her, and what were you doing as well. It can all affect the magic. I could ask you a thousand question, and may still miss out on a detail. Using the rune to see your past would be the most efficient. But I have to ask for your permission. Your memory is yours only. I can’t arbitrarily go ahead and peek into it.”

Tanaka ponders for a minute, squinting suspiciously at Suga. “You have runes like that? Should you be selling those?”

“We would never sell them,” Suga confirms firmly. “You can never be sure how a customer will use the magic you create, so we are always extremely cautious when creating magic that can be abused.”

“But you have them.”

“I made one the other day,” Suga admits. “And if you allow me, I would like to use it.”

“What if I refuse, wary that you might see something embarrassing in my memory?”

“Then you stay cursed,” Suga says shortly, then, seeing Tanaka’s pout, he adds, “I can try other methods, but you lose your best chance.”

“What if you see something embarrassing?”

“I wouldn’t tell a soul,” Suga replies. “Mage’s oath.”

“Alright then,” Tanaka says. “You may take a peek.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Suga lets out a sigh of relief, walking over to the kitchen corner, where Tendou had left the rune under his mug. It’s a little stained, but not dangerously so – worst-case scenario, the memory will have a lingering coffee smell.

“Here we go,” Suga turns back to Tanaka, lifting the rune to Tanaka’s lips. “Grab on the paper, and breathe on it while thinking about yesterday evening.”

Tanaka does as he is told, and suddenly the world twists around them. The murky backroom slips out from under their feet, the air gets filled with the sound of cicadas, a cool breeze blows through Suga’s hair, pushing it out of his face. The ceiling opens up above their heads onto the big, dark sky, and the moon’s big orange circle comes up between dark grey clouds.

“I can’t believe this!” they hear Saeko’s voice, and as Suga turns his head to the side, he sees Tanaka’s sister exiting their family home with bright pink cat ears peeking through her blond hair.

“Pft,” Tanaka from the memory snorts. “You look great, how did you manage that?”

“Don’t you dare to laugh,” his sister warns him, “I mixed up two words in an incantation.”

“No, but you see,” Tanaka continues, a wide grin spreading across his face, “you should keep it. I’m sure Udai-san will love it!”

“Didn’t I say not to laugh?” Saeko barks back, fury tangible in her voice. “It’s not funny.”

“It is.”

“Really? Do you want to look ridiculous when your crush sees you?” Saeko asks, lifting her hand and poking Tanaka’s chest. “Try it once and see.”

The land moves under them, but instead of ending up back in the shop, Suga finds himself on the street where he lives, not far away from his apartment. He glances to his right, finding that Tanaka is just as confused as he is, if not a little bit embarrassed; a faint blush creeps onto his skin, painting his face red.

Across the street, a young woman waves in their way – Tanaka’s business partner, Suga assumes, and he realizes simultaneously that he has no idea what Tanaka works at the moment. As Tanaka from the memory steps closer, he pulls Suga with himself, without the mage moving his feet. It kind of feels like standing on those long moving walkways at airports, connecting the different terminals.

“Shirai-san!” memory Tanaka smiles. “How are you?”

The woman smiles back at him. They make small talk before deciding to go to a nearby café for a drink. Tanaka turns, spinning the memory world around Suga. The houses rearrange themselves around them, Suga’s apartment ending up behind them, while his favorite bakery right in front.

“We have a wonderful day to…” Memory Tanaka starts, when the bakery’s door opens, and a very grumpy-looking Suga exits with a fresh custard pie between his lips. His eyes are barely open, and he ignores the pair walking past them as he fiddles with his wallet. A smile tugs at the lips of Memory Tanaka, sweeter and softer than the polite ones before shown to his business partner. His skin suddenly cracks, opening up in a hundred places, small grins forming over it.

Tanaka’s business partner screams in surprise and faints into his arms.

The memory finishes as abrupt as it had started, and Suga finds himself back in the rather dark room, standing in front of Tanaka. The rune he held up to Tanaka had vanished from his hand, which now hangs mid-air, painfully aimless and dangerously close to Tanaka’s chin.

He finds it hard to speak, let alone to move, as Tanaka’s stormy grey eyes find his. “So… Uhm,” he clears his throat. “I think we know now the nature of the curse,” he says, collecting the crumbles of his professionalism, but the task seems as for Cindarella to separate peas from lentils. “Yesterday was a full moon, a red moon on top,” he backtracks, hoping that by talking about something else and not addressing the most burning issue, he can stall for some time during which he can gather himself. “While academics argue that the different planets do not affect magic, it is undeniable that the moon has an amplifying power on incantations.”

“I see,” Tanaka replies, glancing between Suga’s eyes, lips, and his hand still hanging mid-air. Suga wants to pull his hand back. He cups Tanaka’s face instead. 

“Your sister cursed you because you made a snarky comment about her crush,” he says.

“Yeah,” Tanaka breathes.

“And it activated… when you saw your crush,” Suga finishes his sentence, thumb running up Tanaka’s cheekbone.

“It seems so.”

“I’m your crush.”

_ “Oy, Tanaka, don’t strip all the time!” Daichi shouted, and Suga laughed as he watched the muscular, tough second-year jump from the authoritative voice. _

_ “It’s so hot, Daichi,” he said, playing the little devil as always, knowing that Daichi would let him. “I would also strip if I ran so much.” _

_ “Yeah, of course,” Daichi said, walking back to the school building. Suga watched as his figure disappeared behind the first corner with a little envy – the school building was air-conditioned – but he had made up his mind to wait for Tanaka. _

_ If he was entirely honest with himself, he even felt that staying out in the sun and watching the sweat sparkling on the skin of the half-naked second-year was worth risking a heatstroke. _

_ Tanaka walked up to him with a wide smile on his face, and Suga couldn’t help but tease him a little. _

_ “You’re crazy, running in this weather. I won’t carry you if you faint.” _

_ “Hahaha,” Tanaka laughed, hands on his hips, “that would be awesome though, I could say I have been carried by the prettiest senpai!” _

_ “Hush now,” Suga cut in, jabbing Tanaka in the shoulder. “It’s likely I couldn’t even lift you, so I would just end up dragging you behind me on the floor.” _

_ Tanaka’s laugh was contagious; Suga caught himself folding over, seeking support in the muscular arm of his underclassman. They laughed, little too long and too energetic for Suga, who found himself out of breath soon enough.  _

_ “Come on, Suga-san,” Tanaka sighed, straightening him in his stance.  _

_ Suga stared at the mole on Tanaka’s shoulder, just above where he grabbed onto his arm, but Tanaka urged him to look up, look into his eyes, but as soon as their eyes had met, Suga felt anxious and he let his eyes drop to Tanaka’s nose instead.  _

_ “Let’s go inside, we can’t have you melt under the sun,” Tanaka spoke, and Suga’s glance fell on the lips.  _

_ Everything about Tanaka had been warm, from his latent magic bouncing around him to his words of constant encouragement to the way his lips quirking up into a warm smile.  _

_ He wanted to kiss Tanaka. _

_ The feeling was so sudden and so intense he surprised himself, and he glanced up in a panic to see Tanaka staring at him with a quizzical expression on his face. _

_ “It’s so unfair that we can’t have air conditioning outside!” he blurted out the first thing. _

“You’re my crush,” Tanaka agrees, leaning against Suga’s touch.

“In this case, I might be able to break your curse,” Suga smiles, little cheeky, drawing his left hand up to mirror his right. Cupping Tanaka’s face closely, he steps closer. “You see, your curse seems very similar to hanahaki disease.”

“Is that real?” Tanaka asks, face mushed up in Suga’s hands.

“Extremely rare but definitely real,” Suga nods. “Now, back to your problem. Since your condition was to be seen by your crush, I think the solution is rooted in being with your crush too.”

“Yes?”

“My proposed solution is one of the oldest methods known to spellcasters. Also one of the most ambiguous and troubling one, which leaves scholars and practitioners baffled alike.”

Tanaka’s eyes go wide out of curiosity, then close when Suga ducks in to kiss him. It starts chaste before Tanaka returns and deepens it, turning it into way wilder than necessary for the sake of the magic to happen.

They part panting, both of their lips wet and red and swollen, Suga’s goggles pushed almost entirely off his head.

“Smile,” Suga orders.

Tanaka breaks into the widest grin Suga has ever seen on him. His skin stays intact, beautiful and flawless.

“Good,” Suga laughs, leaning in for another kiss. “This one is free,” he says.

“Wait, you want to charge for the first one, Suga-san?” Tanaka asks disheartened.

“Look, this is my humble business, and I did break your curse, didn’t I?”

“Hm,” Tanaka nods, squinting his eyes. “What forms of payment do you accept?”

“Let’s see… cash, credit card, dinner date?”

His stomach decides that this is the best time to finally growl.

Tanaka laughs, hugging him close. “Dinner date it is.”

to break a curse (you need true love’s kiss)

**Author's Note:**

> please imagine years of useless mutual pining, where these two would attend the same events, only to send longing glances in the direction of the other, but never actually taking the initiative... it was supposed to be a little longer, including a few scenes from in-between high school and the present, e.g. daichi's wedding, but then i wouldn't have made it in time
> 
> so take it as it is, hot mess with an extra serving of cheese. no one has beta read it, so sorry if something doesn't make sense^^"


End file.
